


i want you to know that i’m awake (i hope that you’re asleep)

by jaekyu



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Finger Sucking, Friends With Benefits, Getting Together, I would tag this with infidelity but it's not bc JohnJae aren't together in this but y'know, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multimedia, Oral Sex, Sneaking Around, Taeyong and Jaehyun are PoliSci majors, as in texting screenshots lmao, i wouldn't call this fluff necessarily but it's probably the closest i get to that, idk what Johnny's major is y'all can decide that for yourselves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:47:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24216154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: let’s just keep pretending to be friends —It’s almost like a comedy of errors: Taeyong can say, confidently, that the first time he slept with his roommates ex it was an accident. It’s all the times after that where things start to get complicated.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Suh Youngho | Johnny, Past Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Seo Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 30
Kudos: 306





	i want you to know that i’m awake (i hope that you’re asleep)

**Author's Note:**

> you: eren you literally just posted fic with johnyong fwb yesterday  
> me: ok but consider the fact that i have more johnyong fwb
> 
> it is almost 10 am. i have not slept. i have wrote this for you instead. how did this happen? i'm not sure. this considerably more light-hearted then what i usually write so maybe that's what kept me just chugging along with this thing. no beta we die like men.

and I've been seeing somebody  
but I've not found a way to tell you

that I'm seeing somebody  
there's not a nice way for me to say that

I've been seeing somebody  
you know I want you to be happy

since I'm seeing somebody and then maybe we can get on with it  
— **NARCISSIST (FEAT. THE 1975)** , No Rome

“This is the last time,” Taeyong says.

He slurs it. He’s naked from the curve of his shoulders to the cradle of his hips and he slurs, “I’m serious,” because he’s pretty sure Johnny isn’t actually listening. “This is the last time.”

Johnny’s not looking at Taeyong. He’s fumbling with his own belt, button and fly, and then he’s using those same clumsy fingers to work on Taeyong’s matching cages made of clothing.

“Johnny.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say,” Johnny’s hair is all mussed up, falling so far into his face it covers most of his eyes. His breath smells like sour beer and his shirt smells like weed, but right where his jaw meets his neck — the place where Taeyong puts his mouth once Johnny pulls his own shirt over his head — smells like spicy cologne. It tastes salty against Taeyong’s tongue, though, and it’s kind of disgusting when it mixes with the whiskey-wet inside of Taeyong’s mouth.

“Whatever you say, Taeyong. Whatever you wanna do.”

Johnny probably doesn’t mean for it to sound so much like a mockery.

It does anyway.

Here’s a few things you’ve probably already guessed without us having to tell you:

a) This is not the first time and,

b) it will not be the last.

Taeyong’s 9AM every Thursday is his _Modern Political Thought_ class. Every Wednesday is cheap night at the bar they all like. And, frankly, Taeyong has never been very good at prioritizing.

All this to say: Taeyong is always showing up to his Thursday morning class half-dead, hiding his eyes behind his messy hair and hiding a fresh port-wine coloured hickey under the collar of his sweater.

This particular Thursday, the hickey creeps dangerously too high. Taeyong examines himself in his mirror, morphing the shape of his body to see every way his hoodie might drape. A weird, pantomime dance practice to hide the dark mark on his skin efficiently. He always sits next to Jaehyun in POL320, and he hasn’t had the _I let your ex-boyfriend fuck me on occasion, you don’t mind, right?_ conversation with Jaehyun yet, so he has to be careful.

Taeyong sighs. This whole thing — the early morning class, the sitting next to Jaehyun, the _living_ with Jaehyun — would be a whole lot less of a headache if Taeyong could just learn to stop drinking, and stop sleeping with Johnny Seo.

(The thing is: Johnny’s really hot, like, that what-the-fuck was in your milk growing up kind of hot. And fucking him is good, like, the eyes-rolling-back, toe-curling, back arching, kind of good. And every time Taeyong gets drunk, somehow Johnny is always there, being hot, and pinning Taeyong to the walls in bathrooms, or back rooms, or side alleys, to kiss him thoroughly. And one thing always just leads to another. And Taeyong would like to say he just keeps tripping into it, he keeps stumbling into Johnny’s arms and apartment and bed at least twice a week, but at some point — at some point he’s got to be doing it on purpose, right?)

Taeyong ends up thirty minutes for class. His professor gives him a look when he barges through the door, and Taeyong ducks his head meekly and shuffles to his seat.

Jaehyun’s waiting for him, of course he is. He got Taeyong an iced caramel macchiato, with an extra shot of espresso and half ice, just how Taeyong likes it. He offers to send Taeyong a copy of his notes, too, because of course he does.

The little pinpricks of guilt ascend Taeyong’s spine, slow and steady, like spider legs. Taeyong scratches the back of his neck to get rid of the itch but, of course, there’s nothing there.

Taeyong would like the record to show that Johnny and Jaehyun were never, ever serious. Like, not even any semblance of serious. Taeyong’s a bad friend, sure, but let the record show that he is not the _worst_ friend anyone could possibly have.

“They dated for how long again?” Yuta asks, always the devil’s advocate. He’s picking at the fries Taeyong bought himself for lunch and only half-finished.

“I mean,” Taeyong waves his hand, as if that somehow indicates all the subtleties and the nuances here. “Can we even quantify what they were doing as dating? ‘Cause, like, I’m not sure we can. I don’t even think it was that deep.”

Taeil, from his spot beside Yuta, furrows his brow. “Bro, Taeyong,” he interjects, “they were each other’s lockscreens for two months.”

“Taeil,” Taeyong braces his hands against the table. “That is not helpful.” As if Taeil was supposed to be on Taeyong’s side. As if anyone was.

“Listen,” Yuta’s still chewing when he starts speaking again, and he takes a second to swallow before he continues. “I’m not saying you’re not wrong, about them not being that serious, but I think it’s important to examine this from all points of view, y’know?”

Taeyong groans, defeated, and drops his head onto the table, the spot between his braced hands, with a _thunk_.

“Anyone tell you you’d make a good lawyer, Yuta?” He hears Taeil say above him. “Remind me, again, why you’re a history major.”

“Trying to disappoint my parents as thoroughly as possible, Taeil, my man.”

One of the worst things about all of this — this sleeping with Johnny, this sleeping with his roommates kind of ex-boyfriend thing, yeah, that thing — is that it’s starting to become a habit when Taeyong is sober now.

Like right now.

Right now it is early evening on a Monday, and Taeyong has a paper due in about twelve hours for _Sexual Diversity Politics_ that he hasn’t finished. One of Johnny’s house mates is playing “Roxanne” (it’s either Ten or Mark, Taeyong thinks it is an equal chance that it’s one or the other) and Taeyong wishes he could tell them to turn it off, because it is decidedly not mood music for _this_.

On the other hand, Taeyong is hard in and in just his boxers already, so what’s the point of making it an issue?

Taeyong forgets about the music, the occasional footfalls that remind him it’s not just him and Johnny at home, and preoccupies himself with Johnny’s mouth. Johnny’s mouth, which is drawing a path of wetness down Taeyong’s jaw and throat, in between the thorough kisses Johnny presses into Taeyong’s mouth that seemingly go on forever, wet and open and warm, and still somehow never last long enough.

There’s this way that Johnny touches Taeyong’s inner thighs that is maddening. He does it all the time. He’ll slide Taeyong’s jeans off, one calculated movement after another, and then he’ll spread his palms flat against the innermost part of them. He’s doing it right now. He’s pushing Taeyong’s legs apart, just a little further, and then he’s kissing up the soft flesh of them.

Taeyong watches the ceiling, letting his body take this all in through touch, but when he chances a look down he finds Johnny looking back up at him, through the frame of his brow and his bangs, while he sucks a mark into Taeyong’s thigh.

The moan that slips out of Taeyong is loud, guttural, and embarrassing.

“Your roommates definitely heard that,” Taeyong flushes, throwing his arm over his eyes. “Oh my god, your roommates are gonna know I’m a whore.”

Johnny hums. “Is that supposed to be a secret?”

“Fuck you,” Taeyong bites back.

“Baby,” Johnny purrs, and he’s using the voice Taeyong has told him he hates. That makes Taeyong’s dick twitch. “I’m trying.”

If Taeyong had to find something about Johnny to complain about (aside from the obvious thing, the ex thing), it would be that he’s way to fucking smug sometimes.

“Can you, like,” Taeyong says, “suck me off already or something? I have a paper I need to finish.”

Johnny doesn’t reply. He’s moving back up Taeyong’s body from between his legs. Decidedly, getting further and further from Taeyong’s dick.

“I don’t know,” Johnny shrugs, still using that voice. It sounds like someone shoved hot coals down his throat. “You get pretty loud when I blow you, y’know? I’m sure everyone would hear. I don’t want to embarrass you.”

Johnny’s talking shit. Taeyong knows Johnny’s fucking with him. He’d know just from the look in Johnny’s eyes and the teasing lilt to his voice. But he knows, especially, because Johnny puts a hand on Taeyong’s dick through his boxers, and kneads it gently with his fingers.

Taeyong’s reply is wordless: he takes the hand Johnny doesn’t have on his dick and lifts it to his mouth. He sucks three fingers into it, purposeful in the way he hollows his cheeks around them, runs his tongue over them, even the way he nips at the pads of Johnny’s fingers as gently as he can. Taeyong really hopes the last time Johnny washed his hands was recent.

It works, though. Johnny gets the hint. Taeyong keeps Johnny’s fingers wet, letting them push down his tongue and stretch his mouth, and Johnny puts his mouth on Taeyong’s dick and does this bastardized version of what Taeyong is doing to his fingers. Only Johnny is sloppier, there’s more spit and ugly noises from Johnny.

The fingers in his mouth almost keep Taeyong quiet. Almost.

After Taeyong is finished with Johnny, he checks his phone.

He has one missed text from Jaehyun, it says:

_pls bring home bread_

Taeyong checks the timestamp. He’s pretty sure Johnny was jerking off onto Taeyong’s stomach when Jaehyun sent it.

Taeyong flushes and shoves his phone back into his pocket.

He stops and picks up the bread, though.

The first time Taeyong met Johnny he was shirtless and standing in Taeyong’s kitchen.

This was back during second year. This was before the matching lockscreens, for Jaehyun and Johnny, and before-before the hooking up, for Johnny and Taeyong.

“Uh,” Taeyong said lamely, clutching the sock he hadn’t put on yet in his hand. “You don’t live here.”

“No,” Johnny replied. He looked awkward, almost, and damn, if only the Johnny and Taeyong from this day could see Johnny and Taeyong from right now. “I do not.”

“And you’re here half naked in my kitchen because?”

“Oh, um,” Johnny had run a hand through his hair. Taeyong realized, like a punch to the gut, how hot this guy was. Tall, toned. The length of his shoulders was long, but not as long as his legs. “I’m here with Jaehyun.”

Taeyong pursed his lips and nodded slowly. “Oh, well, y’know,” Taeyong shrugged. “Good for him, I guess. I need to go to my study group but, like, tell Jaehyun I said good for him.”

It is Thursday. It is 10AM. Jaehyun leans in his chair in the lecture hall to talk to Taeyong, who is slumped down and basically snoring.

“Johnny’s having a party this weekend,” he tells Taeyong. “You wanna go?”

At the mention of Johnny’s name, Taeyong is suddenly wide awake. There is no hickey on Taeyong’s neck or chest today but there is one on his lower back, just above his ass. After Johnny had given it to him he had called it Taeyong’s tramp stamp.

“Isn’t that weird for you?” Taeyong asks Jaehyun instead of answering his question. “To go to Johnny’s party? After everything?”

Someone sitting a few rows in front of them turns and gives them a look, a look that says shut up, but Jaehyun keeps talking anyway. “Nah,” he says. “I mean, it’s been awhile. We broke up, sure, but it’s been awhile. So it’s whatever.”

Taeyong tries to imagine what would happen next if he just ripped the band-aid off here. If he said: look, Jaehyun, I love you. You’re one of my best friends. You are definitely the best roommate I’ve ever had. I have to be honest with you, though. I have to be honest with you and tell you that I am fucking your ex boyfriend.

Only Taeyong can’t imagine anything. He starts and stops the scenario over and over in his head. He gets it out, his confession, but then the tape goes fuzzy. He doesn’t know what Jaehyun might do, he has no frame of reference. Maybe Jaehyun will be mad, and maybe he won’t, and maybe that’s why Taeyong hasn’t said anything to him yet.

You can’t plan for something you don’t know is coming. You can’t study for a test without knowing the answers.

They go to Johnny’s party.

Actually, first, they go get dinner with Yuta, Taeil and Jungwoo. Then they pre-drink at Jaehyun and Taeyong’s. Jaehyun puts on J.Cole and they pass around a half-empty bottle of vodka and then a half bottle of Fireball because Taeyong did not plan in advance for the pre-drinking thing. Then they go to Johnny’s party.

The place is decently full. The apartment Johnny shares with Ten and Mark is more like a duplex, so it’s got three floors, two bathrooms, and a little bit of extra room that none of their friends' places do. Taeyong tries to walk in like it’s not a familiar space for him; like he doesn’t know that up the stairs and to the right is the upstairs bathroom and, right next to that, is Johnny’s room.

The couches have all been pushed against the far wall, so that they can still be sat on, but so that there’s enough room for the beer pong table in the middle of the living room. That’s where Jaehyun goes — waving at Doyoung, another Poli Sci major like them, whose name Taeyong usually forgets. All the alcohol is in the kitchen, from the doorway Taeyong can catch the tell-tale silver shine of a keg. That’s where Taeyong goes. The person who’s playing music is playing Playboi Carti. Again, that could be Mark or Ten.

Taeyong gets a red plastic cup filled with bright red jungle juice that burns his throat on the way down and then, well. It’s not that he exactly avoids Johnny but just that everywhere he goes, every room he steps into, is a room that Johnny isn’t in at the time. Taeyong steadily drinks more and more, gets drunker and drunker, and more and more frustrated. He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t even know what he would do if he ended up in the same room as Johnny. Look at him? Jaehyun’s here. Taeyong can’t do anything if Jaehyun’s here.

Taeyong ends up in the upstairs bathroom. No one is using this bathroom. Even with the line-up at the downstairs bathroom, no one is using the upstairs one. There’s a sign in here, haphazardly tapped to the mirror, that says _PLEASE DO NOT DO COKE IN OUR BATHROOM_.

Taeyong doesn’t feel sick. He just tucked his dick back into his pants after pissing and suddenly, the world kind of tilted sideways, and Taeyong decided he wanted to sit on the floor. The floor is nice and cool. 

The upstairs bathroom, coincidentally, is where Taeyong ends up in the same room as Johnny for the first time tonight.

“Oh, you’re in here.” A voice says. Taeyong’s looking at this phone but his head perks up at the noise.

“Oh, hey,” he says, after he spots Johnny standing in the door. “I’m just hanging out.”

Johnny laughs. “I gotta piss,” he tells Taeyong, and Taeyong nods, but he doesn’t move. “Is that a problem?”

“Nah, bro, go ahead,” Taeyong insists, the obvious hints going over his head. He waves Johnny inside the bathroom, and when Johnny doesn’t comply, Taeyong crawls two steps closer to the door so he can grip Johnny by his pant leg and pull him.

“I’m not gonna piss in front of you,” but Johnny’s closing the door behind him.

“I’ve literally put my tongue in your ass,” Taeyong counters. “But if it makes you feel better I’ll close my eyes and cover my ears.”

Johnny does end up pissing in front of Taeyong. And Taeyong does cover his ears and close his eyes because he's nice, even when he's drunk. And when he’s done, Johnny checks to make sure the door is locked, and then he takes a spot on the linoleum of the bathroom tile next to Taeyong. Taeyong reaches over and threads his fingers with Johnny’s, something he doesn’t think he’d do if he was sober, but oh well.

As if Johnny can sense it, he asks, “how fucked up are you right now?”

The music isn’t Playboi Carti anymore. Now it’s Childish Gambino. Taeyong lets his head rest against the wall behind him. “Pretty fucked up,” he confesses, and then he starts laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Johnny asks, half laughing himself, but he’s laughing at Taeyong seemingly losing his mind. Taeyong is laughing so hard he slides down the wall, clutching his stomach, until his head is in Johnny’s lap, hair a mess fanned around him.

“Bro, it’s like — it’s like the meme, y’know?” Taeyong tries to explain, “like, _what Redbone sounds like in the bathroom at a party_?”

“Oh my god. Taeyong, someone fucking broke you. You’re broken.”

Eventually, Taeyong stops laughing. Eventually, his bones start to feel a little heavier inside him, the air starts to feel a little headier, like someone has let the gas on the stove run too long, and all he needs to do is light a match.

Johnny’s hand slides into Taeyong’s hair, nails scratching gently at his scalp. Taeyong wraps his hand on the back of Johnny’s neck and pulls him down to kiss him.

The angle is not quite right; they are horizontal or vertical to the other. They both strain, a little bit, to meet the other person halfway up or halfway down, with their noses pressed into each other’s cheeks. But it’s as good as every other kiss Taeyong has had with Johnny.

For a while, the bathroom is quiet. There is only the sound of Johnny’s leaky faucet, a steady _drip drip_ , the fading chords of "Redbone" coming through the door, and the slick sounds of Taeyong and Johnny’s mouths against one another.

“You wanna fuck me on your bathroom floor?” Taeyong mumbles, he and Johnny basically still pressed mouth to mouth, only a hair’s breadth of space between their lips.

“I have a better idea.” And Johnny’s smirking when he kisses Taeyong again.

The better idea turns out to be Taeyong bent over the vanity. He can see himself in the mirror, his hair still a mess and his pants and underwear caught around his thighs while Johnny fucks him with two fingers. That stupid sign is in his peripheral. He could count all the streaks from stray toothpaste no one has cleaned.

But he doesn’t. He watches himself watch him. Occasionally, his eyes drift to Johnny behind him, mouthing wetly at the base of Taeyong’s neck while he fingers him. Sometimes Johnny will look up and meet Taeyong’s eyes in the mirror, and then he says nasty shit.

He says, “do you like watching me fuck you with my fingers?”

He says, “do you like watching yourself? The way you open up for me, the way all of you begs for me all the time when you’re like this?”

“I’m gonna fuck you open with my cock now,” he says, “and you can watch me fuck you, you can watch yourself get fucked, and you’ll wonder how I can ever do anything besides fuck you — when you look like that.”

When Taeyong comes it is in a mess across Johnny’s hand, wrapped around his cock, and Johnny’s bathroom counter. When Johnny comes it’s in Taeyong’s mouth, the ugly area rug sat at the sink pressing patterns into Taeyong’s knees.

Taeyong takes advantage of the close proximity of the sink to spit, for once.

When Taeyong returns to the party, he’s less drunk than when he left it, but definitely more fucked.

Yuta is sitting on the couch. Taeyong sits on the arm of it, beside him.

“You look thoroughly debauched,” Yuta comments. He lifts his hand to adjust Taeyong’s collar and exposes a fresh hickey. “On second thought,” Yuta pulls his hand away, “let me not touch you. Who knows where you’ve been.”

Unfortunately, we must revisit the whole Johnny and Jaehyun used to date thing.

So, yeah, they used to date. It wasn’t for very long. By Taeyong’s estimations it wasn’t, as an outsider, and both Johnny and Jaehyun insist it wasn’t for very long either. Definitely less than six months. Or, they might have been sleeping together for longer than six months, but they weren’t dating. Not officially. And, really, can you call six months a relationship, even? Like, if you think of that relationship as a baby, it still doesn’t really do much, does it? That’s still a pretty boring baby. And sometimes Taeyong feels bad about thinking about it that way: Jaehyun is his best friend and in some base way, there has to be some part of Taeyong that cares about Johnny. He’s not deluding himself that nothing is happening there. So, it’s kind of unfair of Taeyong to invalidate the relationship they had. Especially when he wasn’t even a miniscule part of it. It’s just, well, bro code fucking exists, man. And he’s breaking it. You don’t mess with your friends' exes. That’s the rule. And Taeyong thinks that that fucking rule is not specific enough, because there are a great many situations in which context could change things.

At least, Taeyong hopes there is.

Taeyong and Jaehyun go to another party. It’s not at Johnny’s place. Johnny isn’t even there. Taeyong thinks he remembers Johnny telling him he was going home for the weekend. Taeyong is seriously considering sending Johnny a dick pic, messing around on his phone as he contemplates this, when Jaehyun lays across from him on their couch.

Taeyong is really, truly and genuinely deciding what angle he’s going to take this dick pic at, and what caption he’ll send with it, when Jaehyun says, “I miss him sometimes.”

“What?” Taeyong replies, maybe a little too alarmed. “Who?”

“Johnny,” Jaehyun sighs. He’s not looking at Taeyong. His gaze is at the ceiling, but his eyes seem farther away still. Maybe it’s just that they’re both drunk. “Sometimes I think I might miss him. We didn’t give us a fair shot maybe? I don’t know. We were just kind of dating for a bit and then we weren’t. It was weird.”

“Oh,” Taeyong swallows. His phone is abandoned on his chest now, face down. He wishes he had gotten up and taken that picture and sent it to Johnny instead of this. “Would you — would you, like, ever tell him that?”

“I don’t know,” Jaehyun shrugs. “Maybe.”

So, about that first time we’ve mentioned.

It was still second year. Johnny and Jaehyun had — well, not just broken up, it had been a little while. But it also really hadn’t been that long. The student newspaper Yuta was on was throwing a launch party for their last issue of the year.

Yuta had invited Taeyong to a bunch of launch parties that year and Taeyong never liked them, they never had good booze or played good music, but this one was supposed to be a big one. So he went.

And, okay, truthfully, we all know where this story ends up. Johnny went too, of course he did. Jaehyun wasn’t there, Taeyong can’t remember why. Did he not come because he knew Johnny would be there? It doesn’t matter. Johnny and Taeyong were there and Jaehyun wasn’t. Taeyong drank a lot, and then he danced, and eventually he danced with Johnny, and Johnny put his hands on Taeyong’s ass and Taeyong supposes that that was the first time he really thought of it, really considered it. It being Johnny’s hands and his mouth and his cock and what he could do with all those things to Taeyong if Taeyong asked.

And then it happened. Like all things in life: not with a bang but with a whimper, it happened. And back when it had happened once, only once, Taeyong could call it an accident. He could imagine himself saying to Jaehyun _hey, I got really drunk and had sex with your ex in a janitor’s closet in one of the old buildings on campus_ and Jaehyun not being mad, or being a little mad, and accepting Taeyong’s apology. When it was one time, when it was an accident, Taeyong could manage it.

But then it wasn’t one time. And it stopped being an accident. And it all spiralled away from Taeyong much more quickly than he could have even imagined.

“You gonna come?” Johnny asks. He stutters in his rhythm. He grips Taeyong’s hips just a little harder for a split second.

Taeyong wants to say _I will if you fuck me properly_ but he doesn’t. Instead, he just says, “yeah.”

“You don’t sound like you’re about to come.”

“How the fuck would you know?”

“Let’s not delude ourselves here, Taeyong,” Johnny’s mouth curves into a smirk that looks more like a knife. “I know what you sound like when you’re about to come.”

As if to prove a point, Johnny pulls almost all the way out of Taeyong and pushes back into him, fast and unexpected. All the air in Taeyong’s lungs makes a swift exit. A groan pulls itself, breathless, from somewhere deep in Taeyong’s chest.

“That’s more like it,”

God, Johnny would be a much better lay if he wasn’t so smug.

“Okay,” Taeyong starts, “okay, I know it might not be my place to ask this question but I have to ask it. I just have to, okay?”

“Wow, really inspiring confidence from me, here, Taeyong,” Johnny replies. “Go on.”

“Let’s say — I don’t know — let’s say Jaehyun asked you to get back together. Would you — would you try that? Would you get back with him and try again?”

Johnny takes a long time to say it, but he says _no_. Taeyong isn’t sure if he believes him.

After, Taeyong will lament to himself that, yeah, he was kind of tempting fate every time they did this, wasn’t he? After, he’ll allow himself the thought of: it was only a matter of time.

But before that: Jaehyun walks in on them.

Taeyong doesn’t know how he could have been so stupid. Johnny never comes over, never, but Taeyong had been desperate. He hadn’t seen Johnny in what felt like weeks, but what probably more like just one. They would have gone to Johnny’s like they always did, but Johnny said his landlord was supposed to stop by today, and wouldn’t that be awkward, if his landlord was over when they were having sex?

And, see, Jaehyun was supposed to be at the library. He was meeting Doyoung at the library, he said, and he wouldn’t be back for awhile, but he’d bring a pizza back with him. Taeyong hadn’t wasted time after Jaehyun left, sending Johnny a picture of him in his mirror with his shirt off, beckoning, and maybe there’s a universe where that was enough. Maybe there’s a version of this story where Taeyong’s haste is what keeps them from getting caught.

Maybe there is a version of this story where Jaehyun doesn’t forget his laptop. Maybe there is a version of this story where Taeyong notices he did.

But if there are those other versions of those stories, it doesn’t matter, because it’s not this version of this story. This version of this story goes like this:

They’re on the couch when Jaehyun comes in. That’s something else Taeyong did that was stupid, stop them on the couch. But Johnny had closed the door behind him, when Taeyong first let him in, and pressed Taeyong against it and kissed him hard and insistent, and Taeyong’s brain couldn’t process anything that extended beyond the room they were already in.

The door is right across from the couch. Taeyong and Jaehyun’s apartment is not big, so the door is right across from the couch.

Their position could not be more compromising; Jaehyun literally catches Taeyong with Johnny’s dick in his mouth. Taeyong pulls off of Johnny and flings himself to the other side of the couch fast, once he hears the door open, but it’s not fast enough. There’s no version of this story where it’s fast enough.

It feels like time stops. Johnny looks at Taeyong and Taeyong looks at Jaehyun and Jaehyun looks back and forth between Johnny and Taeyong. No one is moving. Taeyong feels like he’s not even blinking, or breathing, or struggling to hold himself so close to the corner of the couch so not a single miniscule part of him is touching Johnny.

Finally, Jaehyun breaks the spell. “Okay, so, this was weird and awful,” he says, “Johnny, please put your dick away so I don’t feel weird coming over there and grabbing my laptop so I can still meet Doyoung at the library.”

Johnny does as he’s asked. Jaehyun, pointedly, goes from looking between Johnny and Taeyong to looking at no one when he comes to collect his laptop.

Jaehyun is halfway back out the door when Taeyong finds his voice. “Jaehyun,” he calls, probably too quiet, but Jaehyun is already gone.

“That was,” Johnny starts to say, but he must abandon the thought before he can finish it out loud, because he’s starting a new sentence when he speaks again. “I’m gonna go, Taeyong, okay?”

The anxiety rolls off of Taeyong in waves. His heart leaps into his throat. _Shit, is this it?_ he thinks. Is this the rug pulled out from underneath him.

Johnny must sense something, in some way, because after he collects the sweater Taeyong took off of him from the floor, he leans over Taeyong and kisses him. It’s a slow but chaste kiss. More a short press of two mouths, but it tampers down the ugly thing that was clawing it’s way up Taeyong’s throat from his chest.

The world still feels like it’s about to implode, honestly, but Taeyong’s bought himself a little more time.

It is past midnight when Jaehyun comes home. Taeyong is asleep on the couch and none of the lights in the apartment are turned on.

“Hey,” Jaehyun gently shakes Taeyong awake.

Taeyong yawns and stretches, rubbing slowly at his eye. For a brief moment, he has respite from the world. But then his eyes focus on Jaehyun and everything comes crashing back down.

“Jaehyun,” Taeyong scrambles to sit up, to make room for Jaehyun on the couch. When Jaehyun does actually take the space Taeyong makes for him, Taeyong is relieved.

“I have a question.”  
“Anything.”

“That — like — that wasn’t the first time you guys had done that, right?”

Taeyong considers, briefly, the option of lying to maybe preserve Jaehyun’s feelings. He decides not to. It hasn’t helped him in the long haul in this situation at all, has it?

“No,” Taeyong tells the truth. “No. It’s been, uh, a couple months. We’ve been hooking up for a couple of months.”

Jaehyun doesn’t reply to that. Just breathes out, a slow exhale through his nose as he sinks into his and Taeyong’s couch.

“I’m not even,” Jaehyun sighs, again. He scrubs a hand over his face, frustrated. “I’m not even mad that it happened. I’m mad that you couldn’t even tell me.”

“You said that you — you said that you missed him, Jaehyun. We started fooling around before that and I wanted to tell you. But then you said that you missed him.”

“I was drunk and single and horny and kind of sad, Taeyong.” Jaehyun clarifies, but it doesn’t make Taeyong feel anymore. “I missed getting my dick wet, in general, and Johnny’s was just, specifically, the first dick I thought of.”

Taeyong doesn’t know what to say. How was he supposed to know that? How was he supposed to not assume the worst? He’d always felt like he was doing something wrong, even after the first time with Johnny, and it just got easier and easier to be more and more wrong.

Because he was doing something wrong, because he was lying.

“Listen, Taeyong,” Jaehyun continues speaking, all while Taeyong continues his silence. “I wish I could be more angry with you, kind of, but the truth is I don’t care. I thought about it — I thought about it all night and I talked to basically everyone about it — so sorry if this was supposed to be a secret, but none of them were very surprised, so I assume it wasn’t — and all I kept thinking every time I wanted to be mad at you was why? Why did I want to be mad at you? Besides the lying thing, why else do I care? And then, man, it hit me. I don’t.”

Taeyong nods. He still doesn’t remember how to speak, or, he does, but all his words are caught in his throat. He wants Jaehyun to know he’s still listening.

“At the end of the day, me and Johnny broke up and before that, well, before that we barely even dated. Kind of weird that we’ve sucked the same dick, but whatever, I can get over that. I just wish you would have told me, Taeyong, not because it’s Johnny but — but because we’re fucking _friends_ , Taeyong.”

Taeyong wishes he had something better to say, really, but all his vocal chords, the mess of them, manage to choke out is, “sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I forgive you.” Jaehyun sits up from his spot melted into the couch and punches Taeyong, hard but playful, in the thigh. “Don’t fuck anymore of my exes, okay?”

Taeyong scrunches up his nose. “I’ll pass. Thanks.”

Jaehyun looks at Taeyong, a brief pause, before he says, “you really like him, don’t you?”

Taeyong shrinks into the collar of his sweater, blushed red. “Maybe,” he mumbles, “maybe, kind of. A little bit.”

“Gross. Like, well and truly disgusting, Taeyong. But good for you. You will now be on the receiving end of any and all sloppy seconds jokes I deem worthy to make and you’re just gonna have to deal with that.”

It’s 2AM when Johnny calls. Taeyong picks up anyway.

“I have a 9AM lecture tomorrow, Johnny,” he says in lieu of hello.

“Aren’t you usually out at Farside for three dollar Holy Water on Wednesdays anyway?”

Taeyong hums. “I have decided that that observation is irrelevant and thus I will not respond to it.”

Johnny chuckles. “Can I pick you up? Just for like a drive, or something.”

Taeyong catches his bottom lip between his teeth, worries it for a minute between the press of his bottom and top teeth. “Okay.”

They don’t go for drives in Johnny’s car much. Gas is expensive and they’re lucky enough that everything is pretty close to their apartments that nothing is of a distance that they’d really need a car for it. Taeyong sometimes forgets how far the city stretches out around them, confined to his small little space of school, parties, bars and Johnny.

They don’t talk much, at first. Johnny lets Taeyong AUX and he plays his favourite playlist from Johnny’s spotify. Johnny puts his hand on Taeyong’s knee. Taeyong leans into the touch.

Eventually, Johnny pulls into the parking lot of long, far as the eye can see kind of long, line up of soccer fields. The moon sits directly in front of them, rendered shiny by the glass of the windshield, and huge and full in the sky.

“So,” Johnny speaks the first words into the space of the car that they’ve exchanged since Taeyong said hi to him and Johnny returned it. “Tonight was weird.”

“Yeah,” Taeyong blushes a little. “I think it’ll be okay, though. Jaehyun seems — weirdly well-adjusted to this whole thing.”

“Yeah. Dude’s unflappable, apparently.” They’ve both taken off their seatbelts and sit slightly twisted towards each other. Moonlight is caught in Johnny’s eyelashes, like someone has sprinkled sugar over him, or embedded crystals into the very fabric of his skin. “I also think he just — he just sees how much we like each other and he and I were never like that, so it’s different.”

Taeyong doesn’t process it at first: how Johnny says _we like each other_. At first, all Taeyong hears is Johnny telling Taeyong he knows Taeyong likes him, like, likes him _a lot_ and that’s a little embarrassing, but it’s better that it’s out in the open. But then the words slowly sink in, like that steady drip of the faucet in Johnny’s upstairs bathroom.

Taeyong groans and drops his face into his hands. “Oh no,” he mumbles, to no one in particular. “Oh no, oh fuck. I can’t believe you just said that. I hate that you said that. I’m so embarrassed. Oh my god, Johnny, I wish I could process this like an adult human. But I simply cannot. If we date you will be dating a man with the emotional capacity of a toddler and, for that, I am sorry.”

Taeyong can’t stop rambling but at least Johnny is laughing. At some point, he gently pulls both of Taeyong’s hands away from his face, and slips his own hands in to replace. Taeyong blushes an even deeper shade of red, if that was even possible.

“Taeyong,” Johnny says his name, like he’s said Taeyong’s name a thousand times, only this time it sounds different. It sounds like reverence, like a prayer, like a promise. “Taeyong, you do not have the emotional capacity of a toddler. And, like, if you did, we’d work it out. If you were down for that.”

Taeyong breathes deep a couple of times. He shakes out of his limbs as best as he can with Johnny still holding both of his hands. And then he breathes again. And then he looks at Johnny, bites his lip, and says, “yeah, okay.”

He says, “I’m down for that.”

“Whoa,” Jaehyun says, coming into the kitchen months later. Johnny’s at the stove, flipping pancakes, and Taeyong’s sitting on the counter beside him, sometimes counting out blackberries to add to each pancake, but mostly just feeding the tiny berries to himself and Johnny. “I just got mad deja-vu coming in here just now.”

Taeyong makes a noise, a wordless affirmative so that Jaehyun knows he heard him, and then he plucks another blueberry out of the container and feeds it to Johnny. There’s this way that Johnny flicks his tongue against Taeyong’s fingers just before he pulls them away, that is really, really evil.

“Okay and now I have an incredible case of nausea. You guys are disgusting. Johnny and I were never this bad.”

“You literally were.”

“We were not,” Jaehyun and Johnny refute at the same time. Taeyong laughs.

“I’m gonna go shower,” Jaehyun announces, scratching his tummy in a way that rucks up his sleep shirt. “Save me some pancakes, love birds.”

The last pancake gets a little burnt because Johnny abandons it in the pan for too long. Abandons it to slide over, just a little, so he’s standing right in front of Taeyong. Taeyong wraps his arms around Johnny’s neck and then Johnny kisses him.

And, like, the fire alarm literally goes off, the pancake burns so bad. But Johnny tastes sweet and sour against Taeyong’s tongue, so it’s okay.

**Author's Note:**

> [what redbone would sound like if you were in the bathroom at a party](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py39xcx6nPc).
> 
> title from the Car Seat Headrest song. it's about miscommunication in a relationship so. that's why i picked it. i like car seat headrest fine but if i listen to them for too long i start thinking about how will toledo is a furry and can't stop and it ruins the mood. none of this matters. i am sleep deprived.
> 
> [tweet tweet](https://twitter.com/sIeepwellbeast).


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